


Three Days

by kikibug13



Category: Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: Betrayal, F/F, F/M, Love, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 11:45:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikibug13/pseuds/kikibug13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last three days of his life, Baudoin de Trevalion, Prince of the Blood, thought of Melisande Shahrizai.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Days

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently, this is what happens when I re-read Kushiel's Dart.
> 
> Written for love_bingo: Vengeance.

Baudoin de Trevalion, Prince of the Blood, spent the majority of his last three days thinking of Melisande Shahrizai.

Oh, he thought about others, too. He thought about d'Aiglemort, the traitor; he thought about his mother and how _certain_ she had been that their plans would be successful. He thought about his cousin, Ysandre de la Courcel, whose strength and will-power he had severely underestimated and whom his mother had completely discounted, much to her mistake. He thought about his sister, briefly, and about his father, even more briefly.

But, mostly, he thought about _her_. Melisande. His muse, his love, his beauty, his savage queen who could out-refine anyone, whose eyes shone like moonlit ice, sometimes, and like warm azure waters, others. The woman who could make him do anything, who _had_ made him do anything she whimmed, whom he had given everything she'd asked for, and more. 

Despite general opinion, he would have married her in a blink, his mother be cursed, if Melisande would have had him. 

She didn't. She had shot down each and every hint he'd dropped on the matter, but she had stayed with him all this time, she'd come back to him, every time, so he had believed that was what she wanted. He had believed it in his heart. And then she had spoken at his trial and his heart had broken.

His heart had withered, that day.

Over the next two days, it had died.

She never came to see him, never sent a word to him. Never acknowledged that she regretted what she had done. Never acknowledged that he existed, anymore. 

The first day, it was barely more than pain. Pain and remembrance of all the little things. The touch of her fingertips. The caress of her hair, long and black as midnight. The way her laughter could echo from the ceiling. The soft look she could give him that would both melt his knees and fire up his passion, ever after hours of lovemaking. The crisp beauty of her voice. 

The clear words with which she had accused him in front of the king and Parliament. In front of his country. 

How much had she known? How long ago? What had she thought and what she had asked him about that he hadn't realized? When had she searched through his things and retrieved his letters?

Why?

The second day, he spent trying to remember. Trying to think and recall each and every thing in which he might have wronged her, crossed her, acted against her will. Surely this was some act of revenge. Surely, he had done something grievous enough that she had turned against him, that she had misused him so. There could be no other explanation, no other option of anything made any sense.

He had wronged her, somehow. He just had to figure out how, and then he would beg the boon of writing a note and apologize to her. She would forgive him, and, even though he would die, he would die with her smile in his eyes, not the cool composed look she'd had at the trial. It had to be her revenge, but when he begged forgiveness with all his humbleness, she would grant it.

But all the day he tried to think what he had done, and could not. And only then did he truly comprehend the fact that she'd betrayed him, and then his heart died.

The last day, he spent trying to figure out a way to bring vengeance to _her_. He was a man and a soldier, she was but a woman, even if the most amazing woman. He had to have a way to find, friends to ask, favors to call. 

But all that he attempted, he was denied. All turned their backs to the traitor, and all he had was his prison walls and his own mind.

His mind was filled with Melisande Shahrizai. 

And it did him no good at all. Each and every way he saw her brought low for what she had done to him, to his family, to his _glory_ , gave him a moment's respite before he recalled that he was powerless to make them happen, and the gloom returned. 

He saw her debased, poor, losing her beauty as well as her status. He saw her hanged, quartered, he saw her dying of poison like his own mother would, on the morrow. 

Each and every way, he saw her fade and, sometimes, die.

Each and every way, in the end, her beauty shone at him, and he wept for her, still.

When they gave him his sword, he fell on it with no hesitation at all. 

 

Melisande Shahrizai spent the last three days of the life of Baudoin de Trevalion, Prince of the Blood, and traitor, composing a response to Waldemar Selig. And if her words were more fiery than usual, she had no doubt that he would take that as a sign of passion and dedication.

 

Neither of them knew that Baudoin would have his vengeance, anyhow, in the hands of a young woman that they both had toyed with less than a fortnight ago. For that matter, neither did she.

But her heart, too big for what her role usually was, wept for the prince she had not saved and accused the woman who had planned his downfall, anyway.


End file.
